When everyone will drive electric cars, we will need a huge battery recycling industry. But how will we know which batteries can be used again and which ones have to be discarded? Engineers of Volkswagen Group thought of something – nananananana BattMan!
It is not the Dark Knight, actually. BattMan or Battery Monitoring Analysis Necessity is a system, which basically functions as a diagnostic tool to inspect electric car batteries out of the bodies. The problem of battery recycling and reusing is that it requires an extensive analysis. Sometimes cars are crashed or otherwise destroyed very early, which means that their batteries could be reused in other cars. Older batteries, which do not offer a sufficient capacity anymore, could be used in energy storage systems. And, of course, some batteries have to be recycled into useful materials for brand new products.
Typically inspection of the batteries is done semi-manually. Engineers need to inspect every part of the battery pack and diagnose potential problems. BattMan ReLife, developed by the Audi Brussels quality management department, is basically an integrated software-hardware solution, which is capable of a quick and reliable analysis of Audi e-tron’s high-voltage battery. After plugging in it checks whether the battery is even able to communicate and transfer data. Then it measures the battery’s insulation resistance, capacity, temperatures, and cell voltages. BattMan displays all the error messages and helps assess the overall condition of the battery, which aids the decision making process about its further path in the recycling-production line.
Axel Vanden Branden, Quality Engineer at Audi Brussels, explained: “We are able to measure all a cell’s most important parameters. Then a traffic light system indicates the status cell by cell – green means a cell is in good order, yellow means it requires closer inspection, and red means the cell is out of order.”
The battery usually goes along one of the three paths. In the first one, it can be reused in another electric vehicle. For that the pack needs to be entirely healthy, safe and have enough of the residual capacity. The second path is the “second life” – if the capacity of the battery is relatively low, it might be used in a flexible quick charging station, a mobile charging robot, a driverless transportation system, or a forklift. The third path is efficient and clean recycling, separating useful materials that the battery is made from.
Electric cars are not really that new, but their popularity means that we need to make the entire process cleaner and more efficient. From manufacturing to recycling. It is not enough that they don’t have exhaust emissions – they need to be clean throughout their lifespan.
Source: Volkswagen